


Once

by damascened



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:09:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damascened/pseuds/damascened
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once Upon A Time</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once

**Author's Note:**

> Written Dec. 18th, 2011

Once upon a time, Sirius’s eyes were young and held the secrets to the universe, and he gave each and every one of them to Remus. Once. Once upon a time, Remus hadn’t been able to see each of his ribs, to feel his breaths along the vibraphone of his body as lay on his side and tried to forget the memories of Azkaban. Once. Once upon a time, Remus hadn’t needed to pick Sirius up off the floor like a broken marionette, to kneel beside him and rub circles into his shoulders in the darkest hour of the night, as if Remus might give him back the secrets to the universe now that Sirius didn’t know them any more. Once. 

Once upon a time there was no hall of prophecies, no Bellatrix Lestrange, no veil. Remus knows this because he reads papers written by muggle academics that are full of words like ‘the multiverse’ and ‘string theory’. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, far past the third star on the right and light years beyond the concept of morning, he knows that there are other universes out there, that somewhere beyond the faintest echo of residue from the Big Bang Sirius is there, alive and whole.

He also knows that these universes will never touch for as long as they exist.

But after the battle, after Dumbledore’s fall, after Greyback escaped with blood on his hands and three fresh corpses for families to bury. After seeing Bill’s scars covering his dead pulse-point, the ghost George’s last smile still lingering on his lips, Tonk’s hair absurdly bright and bubblegum pink against the blood and sinew and  _oh God_  he can just about see her  _skull_  above her left eye—after the hurly-burly’s done, after the battle’s lost and won, Remus goes to Dumbledore’s office.

 

*

It’s almost impossible, the amount of research, papers, parchment and notes that the Order has him sort through. He finds everything from a signed copy of  _Quidditch Through the Ages_  to a commentary on  _the Tales of Beedle the Bard_ , of all things, and piles of old letters from a lifetime ago to someone named ‘Gellert’ (Remus tries not to pry on the personal items, but they were hidden in a pile of correspondence with the Ministry of Magic, and he only realised they were personal after reading the first line).

Then there are the stacks of Hogwarts business, on the minutae of the inner workings of the castle. This he has to read thoroughly as he files it, or he knows he gives Minerva a headache a when she looks for information on hidden walls in the dungeons and finds lists of protection charms on the owlery instead.

It’s when he’s looking through papers on the concealed items hidden at Hogwarts (he doesn’t know what a horcrux is and neither does he want to if Dumbledore’s banned all books on the subject) that he comes across something…rather odd. He could see immediately why such an object had to be hidden—it was enough to drive a man mad, that mirror, enough to dwell on dreams and forget to live…Remus hadn’t felt sane since the veil.

It’s hidden high up, close to the astronomy tower, in a complicated maze of hidden doors and protective magic. Remus hasn’t encountered half the charms he’s up against before, but after a trip to the Restricted Section and three  days of nonverbal counter-jinxes, he’s freed the mirror of its magical prison.

 _He_ ’s there, in the mirror, just as Remus knew he would be. He isn’t quite either of the Sirius Remus has known. His eyes are too wise to be the Sirius from Before, too hopeful to be the Sirius from After. His stance is too still to be Before, too peaceful for After. He looks like Remus had imagined Sirius might look if he had never gone to Azkaban, never felt the strain of the second war and Harry, Remus having to go long distances and returning, tired and pale, only to leave a few weeks later. He is timeless, Remus knows, nothing more than a shadow of light and Remus’s imperfect memory. The knowledge doesn’t stop his legs falling from underneath him, landing hard on the sun-covered stone, Sirius mirroring his movement on the other side and bringing his hands up to rest against the glass, as if he was trying to break through to him. As if he wants to reach out and rub the secrets of the universe into Remus’s shoulders, the secrets that Sirius has given him all those years ago and Remus has given back a million times over on a cold floor when the house was quiet and tranquil.

 

*

Remus doesn’t know how long he spends staring into the mirror, but the shadows have elongated, dust bright in the air above stacked desks and broken chairs, when he has the idea. He angles his throat up, his mouth nearly touching just below Sirius’s eye, and breathes streams of air on the glass until it’s all fogged up and he can barely see the other’s questioning expression. And then, very deliberately, he brings up his left index finger a writes backwards on the glass:

_I’m sorry._

Sirius smiles, then copies Remus’s idea:

_Not your fault. Mine._

The sun shines through the window, through the mirror and lights up Sirius’s face as it hasn’t for so many years. The light at Hogwarts is different from ordinary light—something to do with the Scottish countryside and high windows and the stone structures and turrets from another lifetime. It’s enchanting. Unreal.

_Are you real?_

_I am a memory. I exist, but I am not real._

Remus knew all along.

_Harry misses you._

_How is he?_

So Remus tells him about Harry, how brave and noble and so like James; about the battle and the four funerals instead of a wedding. It’s drawn with inexpert, clumsy fingers, unused to the art of writing backwards. There are moments he forgets himself and turns the letters the right way round, times he has to use capitals in the place of tricky lowercase. It’s rife with abbreviations and by the end looks like a child wrote it. Sirius reads it like an academic with an undiscovered Shakespearean sonnet—wild, hungry eyes and undivided attention focused on shifts and swirls in the patterns in the fog. When Remus has finished, he has another question.

_What about you?_

 Remus averts his gaze to an ink stain on one of the chair-legs, trying to think of something,  _anything_ to tell Sirius that won’t make him feel guilty. Sirius sees anyway and presses his palms even more urgently against the glass, an unconscious, instinctive gesture. He writes again.

_I’m trapped, Remus. Can you help me?_

He pauses, but he can see from the line of Remus’s jaw that he doesn’t understand, so he adds:

_In the veil._

_How?_

_I don’t know. There’s nothing here. White and grey. Only shades. I can see the veil. I can’t pass through. And then you came to me._

Remus found, to his intense surprise, he knew the place being described.

_I know where you are. It’s like where the ghosts go, when they can’t move on. Only you’re a memory, and you can’t move on_

_—s_ omething to do with Bellatrix’s curse not actually having been the killing curse and the origins of the veil, he thought, but couldn’t write out—

_until you’ve sorted your unfinished busine_

—oh.

It wasn’t only Remus who understood in that moment. Sirius quickly finds clear patch near the edge, unevenly fogs it up and begins to write frantically:

_Where are you?_

_Hogwarts_

Sirius barely even notices the reply.

_You have to forget about t_

_Si_

_his . You have to get out. It’s okay. I’ll be fine._

_I’ll try to find a w_

_FORGET._

_When this is over, I’m coming to find you._

_Remu_

_I will._

_Don’t._

_I will._

 Remus picks himself up, unsteady on his feet, leaning his weight against the frame. Sirius rises with him, then leans forward, breathes against the glass. And then come his final words:

_I miss you._

Remus mouths the words back, honest and true and Sirius was never good at lipreading but Remus knows he understood those words just fine.

And then he turns and walks away from the late afternoon sunlight, and forces himself not to turn back and take one last look of Sirius in the mirror. Once upon a time, in an infinite number of universes, their situations are reversed, revised, scripted, forced, dead, dreamt, imagined, madness, truth, honesty.

Once. 

 


End file.
